I've been having fun taking pictures of transportation this month, it's got me at least thinking about taking pictures.

Some day I want to travel on this - the views from it must be fantastic (Amtrak's coast train). K7, 77 Ltd

Spotted during our lunch break coming home Sunday. I didn't want to get too close, figured security would chase me off if I tried to take a picture with the lens through the chain link fence. So I stayed across the street and cropped this one to make it look like a pano. K7, DA 35 macro

I thought this one was effective, taken with one of my favorite lenses. K7, DA*200

In many ways, this picture is a very poor picture. But I'm going to post it anyway, I want to see if it managed to retain the 3D feeling that the full sized picture has (probably not, with all the down-sizing). I don't know why I like this shot, everything possible just about is wrong with it. But I do like it for some reason. Feel free to tell me it's lousy and point out all the things that are wrong with it.

I'm still not going to replace the picture I posted for the challenge - while all these have elements I like, all of them have significant faults, enough so that the CHiP's bike I posted for the challenge is still better than anything else I've tried this month.

I thought about cloning out the telephone poles, but there were too many jagged edges and I thought I'd have trouble matching things with the mountain background.

Ronny - I know what you mean about the memories, though the tanks I knew were different models and colors. The ones I saw every day for a few years were far more battered than these. And what's amazing is just how fast the military can unload a train like this, if they need to. Looking at the last picture, this one was being either loaded or unloaded by civilians. We didn't stick around long enough to figure out which.

#1 is my favorite. Classic composition. Ride the train: you will love it. I took Amtrak from Chicago to Seattle in 1996 and enjoyed it very much. Not much in the way of photo ops since the vantage points from the train are limited. But it was a feast for the eyes.

I did take the train once. From Chicago to Boston. But, it wasn't a very pleasant trip. I had flown to Milwaukee the Saturday before 9/11 having flown through Philadelphia on the way and the train was the best way home for me. I was alone and not coping well being away from all family during it all.

But, I would like to take a pleasure trip some time on it. Like I said, my sister swears by that mode of travel.

Back in my college days I took a wonderful train trip. I didn't sleep much but had a great time - started in L.A., got off in Flagstaff and spent the night with a high school friend, then re-boarded the train, getting off and spending a night with another high school friend in Chicago, then boarding another train to Detroit, where I met up with my college roommate for the trip to school. What a blast - a progressive party all the way across the country.

I really would like to take the coast train some time, but this time I'd want a sleeper. I now like my comforts!

As far as black and white conversions - I normally use the b&w adjustment layer in CS4 - it gives you control to lighten or darken specific colors. Lightroom has the same thing, but for some reason I'm more comfortable with the one in CS4 for some reason. This one I did the conversion in Topaz Lab's Detail program. I could have probably gotten the same result in CS4, but was playing around with Detail's color adjustments a bit and liked this one. Otherwise I probably would have sharpened with Detail and done the conversion using CS4.